Original subtitles

We're going to talk about workflow right now

and if you've actually learned from me in

business that you know that I strongly encourage

you to work on your business rather than

just in your business.

Now in your business is basically doing all

the photoshop, doing all the day-to-day

work that anyone can do.

Doing the on the business stuff basically means

that you're working on profitability, maximizing what you

do, your efficiency and then keeping everything in

order and just keeping the engine running.

Now so with my workflow there's certain things

that I do and there's certain things that

I basically give away and I'm here to

basically tell you exactly what I do in

my workflow and why I get up to

a certain point and why do I outsource

all the rest of those things.

So let's for example, we're going to talk

specifically about shooting a wedding.

So liken anything that I talk about, any

genre that you're doing, liken it to a

wedding.

If you're photographing a wedding, well of course

usually there's only one chance of getting it

right.

Like I want to say usually because I

could get divorced and I get remarried, who

knows, but you've got one chance to get

this right.

So at the end of a wedding day,

what I want you to do is before

you actually leave the venue, I want to

get all your cameras together where you're actually

using multiple photographers.

I want you to have all of your

cards in one particular case, make sure it's

a hard case, make sure that you can't

crash it, it doesn't you know it's waterproof,

all these different things.

Just make sure that the case that carries

the cards is perfect and strong and reliable.

So now you have all the cards that

photograph that wedding, whether it's multiple shooters or

not or whatever, everything's in one in one

case.

Keep it on your person.

You might be driving let's say home after

a wedding and you've stopped off at 7

-Eleven to get a drink, you've left all

your camera gear in the car including your

cards and then the car gets stolen, you

can replace everything other than those photographs.

So make sure no matter what you do,

you keep the cards on your person and

your routine sticks the same with every time

you photograph a wedding and every time you

come home.

Now what does that mean routine keeping it

the same?

Well after the wedding you'll come back and

you'll have these cards, this precious story in

the palm of your hands.

Now whether you have a safe, whether you

actually keep it somewhere next to your bedside

table, let's say for example you're downloading the

cards the very next day, whatever your routine

is, make sure it's exactly the same.

You keep your cards away from children, you

keep the cards away from pets or anything

like that, but you keep them in a

very very safe dry place.

Now you've got the cards, you're right there

in front of your computer, nothing can interrupt

you while you're downloading all the photographs on

those cards.

So make sure your routine is very very

very very similar.

You're basically putting one card in, they're all

facing let's say for example the label of

the card could be upside down, that basically

means that you've used something on that particular

card.

Now you get those cards, you load them

up and now let's go to the computer

here.

So what what I normally do is I

just for the moment I just name the

actual folder the name of the couple.

So I've got Lisa and Dylan wedding okay,

so I've got all the raw and jpegs

here, make sure that the actual quantity matches.

So you've photographed raw and jpeg, there's 146,

sometimes there might be an odd number in

this folder, it means that you may have

actually photographed a multiple exposure, maybe your camera

system doesn't allow for a raw file for

that, it could be that you've got a

dat file or one of those weird extension

files, just make sure there's an even number

of photographs based upon the camera system that

you use and everything like that.

So again nothing interrupts you in between you

uploading all the files.

Now why do I say nothing interrupts you?

Let's say for example you've been interrupted by

a phone call, you've been interrupted by a

family member or something, you've put the card

in, you haven't dragged the photographs on the

actual in the folder and then all of

a sudden you come back and you think

you've done it and you take that card

away and you put a new card in

then you've all screwed up.

So you want to make sure that every

single card has photographs within it.

Now some people they actually may name the

cards card 1, card 2, card 3, card

4, you also may put folders like rather

than just putting one folder of all the

photographs in there you may have card 1,

card 2, card 3, card 4 and so

on.

Now it depends on what your system is,

for me I like to just dump all

the photographs into one particular folder, I'm done,

nothing interrupts me while I'm doing it and

now I've got every single photograph there.

Now in terms of backing up, at this

point I've got the photographs on a hard

drive, it could be the hard drive of

your computer, it could be an external hard

drive but you've also got the cards on

your cards itself.

I want you to put them in a

self-sealing bag like a little ziplock bag

and put the name of the couple, it

could be Lisa and Dylan, June 1st 2020,

whatever it may be.

So now you're basically going to go back

and review your photographs and cull them down

and get rid of duplicates and blinks and

things like that and also you'll be able

to remember what's been photographed but all the

cards still exist in a particular ziplock bag

and you don't touch them, you don't touch

them yet.

Now in terms of backing up, there's huge

conversations that could be had now about how

do we back up, what do we do,

what system do we use, I've heard of

RAID system, what do they mean, quite simply

guys you've got to work out what technology,

what suits you the best and your workflow

based upon what you can afford and what's

simple to you or not.

Now I think the golden rule here is

that when you're backing up your photographs and

with whatever you're doing, try to keep three

copies of your files.

I like to keep one particular set of

files on a drive, I call it the

mothership, like a big drive.

I think for as of 2020 we're using

a G technology, what is it called, shuttle

xl drive.

Basically what we do is we put it

on that particular drive, there's redundancy there so

if one drive fails it can actually rebuild

itself and you've got your files back and

there's no problem.

So one goes on usually a desktop, once

I edit everything from here it goes on

a drive, a bigger drive here, I call

it the mothership and then I have one

off-site so for example if you have

someone that works with you, you could have

it at their place at a different location

and then you can put one in the

cloud.

Now what does a cloud mean?

A cloud is a glorified drive somewhere in

the world, somewhere underground in some particular state

in a country near you but in the

end of the day it is actually off

-site as well.

Now if you're like me I've been photographing

digitally now for 20 odd years and for

me to upload all of my files that

I've done digitally to a cloud-based system

would take forever.

If you're just starting out, if you haven't

photographed professionally for a very long time, you

can actually put those on a cloud and

be safe and and you've got several of

your files all over the world and you're

totally covered.

For me personally, going a bit more personal

now, I actually put my photographs on my

desktop, I all my photographs on my desktop,

then I put them on a portable drive

so they're now my desktop and a portable

drive.

From that portable drive I'll go to the

mothership, they'll actually also go to Australia because

I live in two countries and they'll also

go to Joe who works with me as

well and now I've got several copies.

The thing is when I'm traveling I make

sure I keep the last six months worth

of work on a portable drive, solid state

drive, two terabytes usually and then this now

stays with me at all times.

I've got the mothership version, I've got some

work like I said on Joe's particular drive

at his house as well and we're covered

in many many ways.

So I'll let you be the judge as

to which way you go with it, just

make sure you're covered and don't put all

your eggs in one basket and all of

your shots in the one place because if

your house burns down you are done.

So please keep multiple versions of your work.

Now let's ignore that for the moment and

now we've actually got all the RAWs and

JPEGs in one particular folder.

So now you've imported all your photographs and

you've actually uploaded them in Photomechanic.

Now Photomechanic is the industry standard, it's an

incredible program, it actually will view the embedded

JPEG of your RAW file the quickest on

planet earth and it'll link up the RAW

file to the JPEG and whatever you do

with one of them will happen to both

of them.

So as you can see here we've got

the NEF file, so I shoot the Nikon

camera system plus JPEG, all of them are

actually linked and now what I do is

this, I'll double click on one, will expand

this particular view, it'll actually open up a

separate window.

All right so let's do that and maximize

it.

So as you can see now I've got

the numbers right here, I'm seeing the first

photograph.

Now these have already been culled but let's

assume that I was culling it more specifically

as an example of every single photograph that

you've taken at a particular shoot and now

I'm seeing them for the very first time.

So with one finger on the number one,

so if you look at this first photograph,

if you look down here you see how

one makes it pink or magenta, then if

I was to click other colors like two,

three, four, five, six, all these colors will

change.

So in essence we're flagging that particular photograph

as what we like or what we don't

like depending on how you like to do

it.

Some people depending on how loosely you photograph,

if you have let's say more photographs that

are test shots or bad shots, then you

may just want to choose which ones you

like and then vice versa depending on your

workflow.

So for me I like to just choose

what I like, so for now I put

the one finger on the arrow button, one

finger on the number one, and what I

do is I simply go through them and

then as I'm pressing the arrow I'm clicking

pretty much what I want.

So I've avoided that one, although I like

it, let's avoid it as if it was

a blink or a duplicate.

I like that one so I'll click on

that.

I like that one, don't like that one,

I'll miss that on that one, no problem.

I like that, I don't want that so

I'll avoid that.

I'm going to click on this one I

like that little small smile, I'll click that,

that'll go with it, beautiful.

So sometimes what I'll do is I'll look

back and forth to see a comparison.

Now yes in this system you can actually

click on multi-view and see two photographs

at the same time if you want to

compare.

In my case I tend to look at

the thumbnails sort of broadly and then I

will go back and forth.

So with this one let's say for example

I like that photograph, I like that one,

I like that one as well.

Let's see, I like the smile and again

I probably would have chosen all of these,

it's purely on an example on culling.

So I go through these pretty quickly.

I like that, that and this is how

you'll do it.

You'll probably even hear the keys as I'm

pressing them.

Don't like these, these were just examples.

I like that, I like that, I like

that one, I prefer those ones.

Looking in the camera, great.

Let me go back and forth, looking away,

smiling, looking in.

So again it's just a very very quick

perspective.

Okay so let's have a look at what

we've done here.

If we double click you'll notice as we

scroll down some are coloured, they're flagged as

magenta and they go down or pink depending

on what you want to call it.

Now what I'll do is this, I will

go here and click on colour class and

because at the moment it was based upon

file name.

Now if you're actually photographing with one camera

you can easily collate it and actually sort

it by file name.

Now yes if you're shooting with multiple cameras

yourself, multiple photographers, you will traditionally want to

do here, capture time.

Capture time is going to give you all

of the photographs that you took in the

exact order that they were photographed.

Of course that implies that all of your

cameras were synced, as in you place the

same time zone and date and time on

every single camera.

So syncing all your cameras is incredibly important.

Then when you bring it in this program

you will first sort it by capture time

and then of course we can come back

and do some other things which I'll show

in a moment.

At the moment it's all sorted by file

name which happens to be because I like

I said I had already culled these, I

already renamed them and that's why capture time

and file name are the exact same in

this situation.

Now being sorted by capture time now you'll

see gaps where I haven't actually flagged it

and haven't favorited the actual photograph.

So what I do now is I'm going

to sort this by color class and you

can see now that everything is in chronological

order based upon sorting on capture time and

then you'll see where it starts to literally

have no flag at all.

The magenta basically means that I want it

and then of course you've got this which

means it's a reject.

I strongly encourage you do not delete your

rejects because there could be let's say for

example multiple family portraits that you've done and

you might have flagged this photograph as a

reject but then the ones that you've chosen

when you were flagging them your hand was

quicker than your eye and you've missed a

particular someone blinking and you have to grab

the face from a reject and place it

over one that you liked because they've blinked

and so on or it could be a

particular scene that you like you know what

I don't really like this particular scene and

that's the scene the bride remembers that she

had to do this awkward posing for and

now you don't have it because you just

didn't like it so you've got to bring

those back and resurrect them so to speak.

So never actually get rid of your reject

files at the very least if you're running

out of space get rid of your rejects

after your album is done and at least

you have a bit of a backup solution

now.

Now there's several ways of of doing this

now.

Now what I personally do I like to

separate these into different folders now so I

could literally go in here and select them

and then rename them.

I could do that but I want to

actually look at them in a little more

detail and separate them so let me explain

this.

Now what I do guys is I have

what I call a structure folder or folder

structure and it's basically done by year month

and day and the name of the particular

couple so if we say year you might

okay so as of today 2020 so month

and day so let's just go over here

so 2020 so month is 03 and then

07 then you might put the name of

the couple and you also might put what

it was okay so I've got the exact

date in year month and day the name

of the couple and then wedding and of

course you can separate the name of the

couple with an underscore there as well so

that's how I do my structure now if

you click into this you'll see where it

says all jpegs movs movie files raws and

rejects now traditionally all the photographs that I've

actually photographed every single photograph from those cameras

there and those cards would be put into

the all folder for simplicity I decided to

actually just name the a temporary folder and

be done but now I'm going to do

this so I've got all the photographs already

there that I've chosen these are the ones

that I want I'm going to put them

first in raw okay so now they're there

which basically means that if I come back

here you'll see that these are all the

rejects there's nothing flagged there's nothing missing so

what I do now with these these are

my rejects I'm going to select them put

them in the reject folder okay so now

this one's gone don't need this is empty

so now I have rejects I have the

raw and jpegs currently in this folder if

you were to photograph any kind of movie

files that'd be in there we don't need

that so we'll delete it you've got jpegs

and all all is redundant now because we

didn't put them there in the first place

so now we simply have three folders what

we have to do though first is I

like to do it this way I'm grabbing

the raw I'm bringing them back into photo

mechanic now as you can see even though

that file name and capture time in this

case are exactly the same okay so we

haven't moved at all I feel that this

photograph for example and these ones should be

at the end in other words if you're

photographing a wedding and you are shooting let's

say some shots that look like they've done

at night time you want to reorder them

and put them in different positions so what

you do in photo mechanic is great because

you actually get the ability so in this

case I can actually reduce the the size

of the thumbnails maybe go a touch bigger

here okay so now I'm going to grab

this one and these two because they very

much shoot sort of towards the end of

the night you would even say that this

one is probably the last one and as

we go through them there's all sunlight it

gets a bit softer here as well and

it's quite harsh here as well so I

would put the sunlight ones in here okay

you've got soft reflected light you've got a

bit of sun here as well so again

I'm going to reorder these and you can

see how my cursor is moving and it

tells me where those photographs will end up

going okay these are window light and then

arguably you would say those window lights probably

should have been first so if I look

at these ones I will put those first

so I start with those so I'm thinking

out loud here this is exactly what I

would do after I color wedding or anything

like that these are sort of the greeny

feel put that there actually that goes together

well there so what I'm doing is also

looking at different groupings in terms of color

palette the light conditions temperature mood feeling all

that kind of stuff the more I play

here the more it's gonna the easier it's

going to be when I'm actually designing the

album so I've got window light I've got

some tungsten light so in makeup makeup lights

I've got sunlight then I've got sort of

like a bit of an overcast then I've

sort of got backlight with a diffuser reflector

I've got that there as well let me

you know I'll leave that there for a

moment and then I've got a bit more

softer and then it gets a bit darker

and moody more dramatic I might put that

there because that progresses so now that we

have them in complete order and the exact

order that we want we have to rename

them so we select them all we press

rename and again depending on your folder structure

in your file names you might want to

know exactly when this was taken so you

have no there's just no hint of a

doubt when this photo when this wedding photographs

were taken so in this case we do

2020 we do month 03 in this case

and then we do day 07 now you

could certainly put an underscore and then Lisa

Dylan you could even put wedding if you

want otherwise sometimes it can get quite crazy

with the extension names my suggestion is keep

it like that add wedding if you wish

now you want a sequence so what I'm

going to do here now is actually cancel

out of that let me go sequence I'm

going to put a dash there so that

it gives me a dash before the actual

number of the file I'm setting a sequence

make sure that you add a couple of

zeros before what you're doing because if you

for example say I want to start at

number one as you get in multiple digits

when you're sorting your file names it'll all

come up really weirdly so just be careful

if you're photographing multiple if you're getting into

the double digits triple quadruple digits always add

the zeros of that's going to give you

an understanding of how many digits it'll end

up being does that make sense so in

this case if it was a thousand images

or so I would go zero zero zero

one and then you can sort of see

the files here and if I go rename

and if I make this a bit larger

you can see how it's got the year

month day the name of the couple and

now it's funny because I put these in

a certain arrangement so it's kept that particular

order now if I go to file name

it will give me the exact order in

which I reorder them so one to six

and as it goes down this is now

the current order okay I'm happy with that

I've got raw and jpegs in perfect order

they're the exact same name and now what

I do is this let me go new

finder window and let me go to desktop

let me go to lisa and dylan what

I do is I'm going to basically so

as we remember raw and jpegs are currently

in that exact same folder an easy way

of actually sorting them out now is going

on this particular view and going kind as

in all the jpegs are in the same

place and you know that when your scroll

bar is around about the middle that's when

you know to select all the jpegs and

that's basically it so now let's look at

the jpeg folder and the raw folder to

see if we have the exact amount of

files in there so as you can see

it's numbered perfectly we've got one to 42

there's 42 images and this raw we've got

one to 42 I always extend it and

always look at it and that's great and

then I've got the regex there as well

so now I've got my working folder so

now you can back it up accordingly once

you've done that you know they're all there

the cool thing is that even though that

I strongly insist on outsourcing a lot of

your work especially when it comes to post

-production I like the fact that me being

the photographer I've actually downloaded the files I

feel responsible for my own work and also

I can check I know what I've photographed

which means that if there's a big chunk

missing let's say family photographs well I know

because I photographed it I know that I

can go back to those original cars that

are in a ziploc bag and I can

grab them out and I can maybe upload

them again or download them again because again

they're there now that I've got this folder

you back them up in a way of

course in the way that you feel more

comfortable with like I said my suggestion is

have one with you portably if you travel

a lot one on your and perhaps one

in the cloud so to speak as well

so now that we've done this what do

we do now okay so now we have

jpegs which is pretty much redundant because you

are going to convert those raw raw files

regex which is sort of redundant but gives

you a bit of a backup now when

it comes to me and my workflow the

raws you've got to convert now whether you

use capture one whether you use lightroom it

doesn't really matter what program you use you

do the corrections that you want to do

based upon what you've got my suggestion is

do not retouch every single image to the

nth degree because they haven't purchased them yet

all you've got to do is correct your

exposure your color balance and that's pretty much

it if you've exposed correctly you shouldn't really

have to do more more of that yes

these other programs like your lightrooms and and

like bridges and things like that you can

use those programs to do what i exactly

just did but i'm telling you photomechanic is

the fastest on planet earth right now and

it has been for many years it is

the industry standard if you want to buy

that as of 2020 go to camerabits.com

camerabits b-i-t-s camerabits.com and

then you can download the latest version of

photomechanic that does that for you now i'm

not going to show you what i do

in lightroom or what i do in capture

one because i don't do it i believe

this is where you can outsource and you

can just get rid of it because there's

just no point you are wasting your time

if you do this you might say well

jerry it costs me money to do this

well i'd rather you actually focus on being

more profitable be more efficient and doing things

that only you can do whereas in this

case converting raw files to to a jpeg

that you can use for proofing and so

on can be done by somebody else so

what i do i as a 2020 i

use a company called my lavalu or lavalu

l-a-v-a-l-u my lavalu

.com i literally put these raw files on

an ftp and then i get high res

exported jpegs back and that's it and it's

fantastic i don't have to think about it

everything's converted i make sure that one person

who does my work at a particular company

knows me and does the work and they

get to know me and my style in

other words if i have photographed an image

of a bride with bright sunlight on her

and then i've got deep dark shadows well

i'm saying i say to my my retouches

and the lavalu for example please do not

increase those mid-tones and bring out all

these things in other words just bring out

the best with the way i've photographed it

if you know that i'm trying to give

you a dramatic shadow to the bride of

this particular photograph leave it don't touch it

and you basically begin to understand how you

work how they how you work and you

have some some continuity and and a nice

little flow and symmetry with what you're basically

doing so now that i've actually submitted the

photographs to a company they've they've now converted

raw to actually high-res jpeg now with

those jpegs i will upload them to a

gallery so it's quite customary that especially in

the wedding industry genre that you will actually

give a gallery to your clients and i

use of as a 2020 i use a

company called cloud spot it's a very clean

interface it's fantastic i don't want to bore

you with the details because it's a very

simple program it's very intuitive but you upload

them in the order that you actually photograph

them you can put them in different folders

for example if you're photographing a wedding you

could do groom's home bride's home ceremony family

locations reception you can put them in different

folders you can put a watermark if you

want to and of course you could even

put pricing on there and people can pay

for them accordingly now whether you want them

to be downloadable or not that's really up

to you so now that we have them

on a gallery we've actually taught you about

how to design an album properly with a

client in a different segment but in the

context of this conversation you've photographed the wedding

you've culled it you've renamed it you've reordered

it you've backed it up you've converted raw

to jpeg now you have these jpegs and

now you need to design the album well

how do we do that so i use

a program called fundy designer and at the

moment as a 2020 it's version 10 i

click on it and i want to design

a new project so of course you will

nominate where you want them to want to

save it to in this case we are

designing an album for lisa and dylan and

i'm going to press ok depending on the

the company that you actually use in terms

of who who produces your albums and things

like that you have to work that out

now in the meantime i will go back

to now when i get my files back

from the company that i've outsourced my proofing

to in this particular folder now there will

be a folder called one second this will

be a folder called proofs these are my

converted jpegs so what i'll do now is

i'll just drag these across and now this

program is going to import all of these

photographs so now what fundy software has done

is actually uploaded the actual high-res jpegs

and now giving me a low resolution proxy

image that i can play with quite easily

and fast and then of course we have

to work out what we're doing afterwards in

terms of the album but for now you've

converted those those photographs from raw to jpeg

you've uploaded the proofing jpegs into your program

like this and now we design an album

so i click on the album module i

click on new album i use graphy studio

so i click on that i'm going to

design a 12 by 16 wedding book so

wedding book usa i click on that and

i come down here and i find 12

by 16 horizontal which is there i click

on next i'm going to basic cover next

and then the album could be called main

album create album so now i have this

spreads waiting for me to populate and then

i've got these photographs here as well now

guys of course you can download a trial

software of fundy you can get into it

you can do whatever you like i'm not

going to waste my time in all the

ins and outs of all the buttons and

all that kind of stuff every so often

i'll reference what i'm doing but please download

the software yourself i've used many uh for

for decades literally and also even help with

the designing of this particular software i believe

in it it's fantastic and it makes your

life so much easier so what we're basically

doing now is we are pre-designing an

album that your couple will eventually see and

then you will walk through with to basically

be able to sell it so for the

moment we're just simply talking about workflow so

if you press the end button you will

see the name of the file there if

you click it off you can do that

as well now there is an auto designer

here which is quite amazing you could simply

go in and flag the photographs that you

want and so if we go back here

so if you look over here for example

if you double click this window will open

now you can use the star method you

can use a favorite or a heart method

you can do whatever you like it doesn't

really matter it just depends on the way

you want to do it me personally what

i like to do is i like to

get my thumbnails bigger so i know at

a glance that because i photographed a cell

i know what's going to go with what

so what i'll do is rather than basically

favoriting and hearting them and things like that

i can filter the ones that i want

to use here if i wish or as

i sort of somewhat suggested before you can

actually design an album automatically literally at a

click of a button and then using these

different filters and parameters with everything now i

think this is a good way to start

i think that as you become more sophisticated

you don't want the the program to do

the thinking for you my suggestion is to

grab these shots simply drag them to a

spread grab these two shots and then drag

them so what i'm basically doing right now

is i am pre-designing the album see

i might like this photograph but i've pretty

much got it there already so i'm going

to ignore that i might put that across

two pages maybe i might bring these two

here and again guys i'm going to go

fast without sort of teaching you per se

because i want to show you realistically how

i do things so i am grabbing the

photographs that i want on these spreads and

if you've watched the segments of me teaching

you how to shoot to sell and not

overshooting then you'll know this to be a

much easier process if you actually go down

that route great

it's designing itself how easy is this i'll

come back i must have clicked that accidentally

don't worry about that that might go there

so now

i'm looking at all these shots i'm like

okay that and that can go together that's

probably going to be on its own we'll

come back to that potentially i might put

those together and then i might end with

that so now i've got the album it's

sort of given me a suggestion as to

where to start from i'll double click on

this now i know um what i've got

to work with now the cool thing about

fundy is that you can actually click on

these layouts pick something that's close to what

you want and then refine accordingly in this

case i quite like that design and you

can see when you press the g key

that the guides will will vanish now the

red denotes the cut zone where where your

album supply in my case graphically will cut

the album to make it all symmetrical your

green area is a safe zone this is

what you want 100 to be in that

particular design now what i'll do is i

often will just go right up there and

butt up right against that safe zone because

i know it's very reliable in this case

i'm designing it this way and remember guys

this is unretouched nothing's been done to these

photographs they are straight from the camera quite

like this i might flip this around and

i might want his you see that particular

jacket there sort of to be nice and

close together and i quite like that sort

of cinematic feel where we're flipping it out

and we've got two shots there as well

guys it's there's no point overthinking this you

just got to get it done in this

case now do you sort of see how

close i am to the edge of the

frame and i don't want her finger chopped

then i will go here and make sure

that's in now whether that deserves a full

page or not i don't really know probably

not but we're just designing something here so

in this case i quite like the no

i quite like that no let's go back

i'll design this out over here like this

fit it and this one can be in

set and again guys i'm not explaining every

little button last button but this gives you

an idea of what this will look like

now i can flip this one so she's

facing herself per se and i can fit

it in there but we might think well

you know what her ear is going to

be a problem therefore if we move over

here we've got more space to play with

there's more critical information so we do that

so as you can see with this we're

sort of fanning her face out to the

left fanning her face out to the right

now this gap this gap and this gap

are all similar the minute you take the

guides away it feels disconcerting because you think

wait a second i want this gap this

gap this gap to be the same well

once it's cut it will be so take

that into account let me go into layouts

and see if there's a design that i

like i quite like this one um well

actually let me have a look here now

i quite like this i'm going to make

that full bleed to the edge as you

can see and then i am going to

inset this one great and guys don't overthink

this you just got to get it done

um the more i look at this i

think that we could probably even put this

across two pages yes his ears being cut

off but it's in the shadow i actually

don't mind that um i'd probably darken it

by the time it gets to here but

this will be like a nice wow shot

to to um to include actually there's in

now that's quite nicely there's that's what it

is again let's go to layouts let's pick

a layout that we like to be consistent

with the designs that we've done so far

we can go full bleed on one side

and not the other quite like this one

but let's have a look and see what

designs there are the more i look at

this i sort of like the idea of

fanning it out like this so i'm going

to have actually i might crop in like

that and that can go full bleed now

the problem with this is i don't have

much space to sacrifice so i think if

i flip it now i do and that

will save me negative space is totally fine

in my humble opinion i will crop it

this way problem is i'm not really getting

his shadow there so depends on what you

guys want to do with that i quite

like that particular crop and then sometimes i

will literally get this in the middle and

then again place it in the middle negative

space left and right that works click on

layouts i might do something like this again

to go with the theme that we've been

discussing if i double click on the particular

window it'll make it full bleed so i

sort of know where i'm going with it

so i go about here it's a bit

more room to that photograph oh one second

here i will

just go there beautiful i'm going to make

this full bleed and then i'll flip this

image so then now that just bleeds in

which looks awesome and i might even do

the same with this quite like the way

the uh the fern fans out a bit

which is beautiful and then fit it and

again you can see in other segments guys

um as to exactly what i'm doing in

more detail in terms of design wise but

now i'm just sort of showing you sort

of my my workflow um we did mention

that there was one too many photographs here

the color palette here actually looks very similar

looks really beautiful um let me have a

look and see okay so let's just fit

this here because every square inch of that

photograph is important at least that negative space

i'm going to crop there and then i'm

going to go full bleed on this one

great you know i don't normally like to

crop into an ear but i think that

because she's the main focus of this shot

i actually quite like that as a double

page spread um this is important but i

like the way this sort of bleeds in

so i'm going to do that i love

that you get some dark space leads your

eye in we've got the blur sort of

blurring into each other and then she looks

at you um and this one i am

going to more critical space here in terms

of like every square which is important i

do have some negative space around here to

allow for the cut zone as we discussed

i could also flip this image which gives

me more space and that negative space blends

in fantastic now this one part of the

charm of course was the reflection in this

shot so we're just going to see whether

how we feel about this or not we

go back here okay i

quite like the idea of putting it in

the center with some negative space just like

that and in this case we've got the

guides and i'm going to put them this

one over here sometimes i'll do it very

perfectly and symmetrically and then sometimes i'll eyeball

it because it just optically looks better than

being mathematically perfect quite like that and then

we've got this one to end off the

album and i usually like to end off

on the left hand side page so we

designed a 40 sided album there very quickly

and of course if you're shooting an event

like a wedding for example it's going to

be multiple images per spread please look at

our other segments based upon album design and

workflow i wanted to show you that in

the context of this conversation to show you

how actually easy it is with this kind

of software to use now what happens from

now so let's say for example you've let's

just reiterate you've downloaded the cards you've backed

everything up you've reordered them you've culled them

you've got the working files you you get

them either yourself or you actually get them

converted from raw to jpeg now you've got

the the proofing jpegs you'll put them online

so your couple can see them in my

case now i upload those proofing jpegs into

this program unretouched straight from the camera i

pre-design what i pre-design and of

course we sell it now please watch our

other segments that are based around the process

of actually selling to your client and all

the techniques that go behind it so please

uh please do that now we're just talking

about flow let's say for example now um

i've sold the album and this is exactly

what they want this is exactly what they

want and now i need to actually get

it retouched now personally i don't retouch my

own photographs i'd be remiss to actually now

sit here and try to retouch where i

don't do that as part of my workflow

i would rather you go like i said

work on your business than in your business

and get your photographs retouched and color corrected

whatever it is like you'd like to do

in post-production by somebody else what i

do at this stage is this i will

let me see here i will go to

um export list of images in use so

i go to my desktop and it'll give

me a csv file and i'll save it

so now what i've got here is a

list of every photograph actually used now the

cool thing is that if you're like me

and you use the same company that to

convert your your raw files to to color

corrected jpegs use the same company to do

the retouching will they actually already have your

raw files and your converted jpegs so i

will send this list to the to the

company that i'm actually working with lavalo in

this case but i'm not ready yet so

here's what i do i need to export

the design now here's why the design is

important guys the design is important because if

this photograph on the left and the one

on the right for example if these two

shots which they are on the same spread

their color harmony has to be exactly the

same so that your designer retoucher has to

know the design of the album so everything

can look harmoniously on a particular spread so

what i do is this i export for

web and i'm going to create a folder

lisa dylan album design create i select now

this is an important one print file names

on design for proofing because we need to

correlate the number of the file along with

the uh visual reference as well so i'm

going to say yes i want to print

all of them and i want to do

that so i press export so now what

the program is going to do it's going

to basically design this album in a low

resolution format and show my designer with number

references exactly what this design looks like so

now with the list of images and a

visual reference now they know what to retouch

so now funded designer has exported proofing jpegs

of the exact design with file numbers let's

just look at it so you can see

here very clearly this is the design and

we've got the number of the photograph and

that of course correlates with the number that

we have here as well so let's just

double click that okay so we have all

these numbers here as to what we need

to basically work along with the visual reference

and the guide that we have here as

well now if you have specific notes about

a particular photograph let's say for example uh

this one she says look retouch my skin

retouch the little flyaway hairs over here whatever

it may be you would put these notes

in this particular file because they actually have

every single number in there and you could

make notes in these particular fields so now

that i've done that i am going to

send the particular list of numbers in use

the exact design and i will send that

to the company that i use and like

i said in my case it's lavalu so

now they have a reference file now they

have a list of images in use they

will go ahead and retouch everything based upon

to my specifications what is my workflow that's

really it i don't do much else in

a sense that my retouching is limited to

color correction and uh and retouching nip tucking

skin but i don't use uh at this

particular case and i like to keep my

photoshop invisible so i like to achieve what

i achieve in camera and then of course

i can just give up everything else but

my retouching is invisible you can't see what

i've done and it's very simple let's say

for example now um i get the photographs

back so they're on ftp i've downloaded all

the photographs that have been retouched they're exactly

the numbers that are being given exactly the

same numbers what i will do then is

do this um so this is my design

so i've got the original jpegs the proofing

jpegs that i use to upload uh into

this program i've designed it i've exported them

uh the images a list of images in

use and the particular layouts they've come back

and now i do this i put there's

a few ways of doing it but you

can go add and update images or re

-sync or rebuild but basically i'll normally go

add an update what i'm doing now is

i'm pointing the program now to the the

actual files that have been retouched not the

ones that were just meant for proofing so

if i was to i don't have the

retouched files in this particular case but if

i did um i would go to my

original folder this will be this will usually

be called album worked i will click on

the ones that need to be linked up

again and i will click open so what's

happening now is the program will point to

the actual retouched images so now we've re

-synced the photographs this design this program is

pointing to the retouched images and all you

have to do is come here and then

you are going to export export for print

now you can order directly through fundy direct

or you can order it independent of that

in this case let's just be global about

it pick a common denominator that most people

will use you will simply go here and

of course you can point back to the

actual folder structure that you did and this

will be called album to print i don't

know why i keep on putting capital well

create and then i select now of course

i don't want the file names on there

you you basically got to pick the profile

that your lab uses in our case srgb

and you press export and this will give

us high resolution prints as in images and

files ready to print okay and there you

have it the actual design has been exported

ready to print it's a high resolution and

let me just show you that so we

put album to print and there it is

now yes it's unretouched and all that kind

of stuff we're assuming you've got it retouched

we're assuming you've done everything you need to

do and it's all there you can see

that it's high resolution you can sort of

see the the pixel dimension and of course

the size of the file and there it

is so now that i've done that all

i have to do is order the album

now in my case i use graphy studio

so in this case i will go in

there and choose basically all my specifications i'll

choose my paper choice my size the paper

that i want the finish any extras anything

like that at all i simply just do

and and then i check out accordingly and

then it'll actually give me a particular ftp

area where i upload the files and guess

what i come back and i have a

finished album i can drop ship direct to

the client i can i usually get the

album delivered to me so i can make

sure i give up my own quality control

just to double check make sure everything's cool

usually i might even film me turning the

pages so i've got a little bit of

a keepsake for myself and then of course

if the your couple lives close to you

or your studio you get them to come

in and you'll you'll show them the album

accordingly or of course you'll ship it to

the client if they live either overseas or

interstate but that's basically it guys workflow doesn't

have to be crazily uh just complicated for

me i believe on doing the things that

only i can do and do best and

leaving all the post-production for other companies

to do i i'm a strong believer in

outsourcing i've survived my whole career by not

doing the the digital production in the film

days i did and ironically that was actually

even harder but now with digital um i

believe you only should be doing a certain

amount but leaving the the the full-on

hardcore color correction and retouching and all the

conversion that you do to somebody else those

hours that you have free now to do

what you need to do is going to

be so much more fruitful than doing the

post-production so there it is i hope

that simplified the workflow for you and of

course in conjunction with this particular segment if

you watch the business segment you'll understand in

more detail why i believe in outsourcing so

much but remember those processes remember those systems

you'll find that you'll get your own little

flow you'll you'll do things your own way

whatever you do keep it consistent make sure

that it is all streamlined you can follow

the process accordingly make sure that you don't

quote your clients exactly what time it takes

to produce all of this in other words

you know you think it takes eight weeks

therefore you'll tell your client eight weeks i

will usually tell my clients this will be

ready in 12 weeks and that gives me

almost like a four to five week buffer

if in case for some reason the retouching

has been delayed the album comes back wrong

or dented in transit and then i can

just get it redone and now i can

deliver it in 10 weeks rather than 12

and now i'm a hero rather than giving

it in 13 weeks and i told them

12 and now i'm a villain so keep

your workflow steady consistent streamlined and i'm sure

you've probably got your own ways of doing

this even easier and better than i i

do but i wish you all the best

remember you've actually already made the money if

you get to the post-production stage so

focus on your business rather than in your

business but this gives you a glimpse into

the my world as to how i do

things hope you enjoyed that